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US Concern Over China's Rise Fuels Korea Conflict

And now under the pretense and veil of North Korea, the Korean Peninsula and the Yellow Sea have come under the real threat by American foreign policy and imperialism. The US cannot confront the growing regional strength of China--it can only engage in political subterfuge as usual, in the US media.

[Blind To The Facts]

Once again the American public has been brought under the mask of international subterfuge and outright lies. For the most part American students and its larger population have no sense of geography. After television gossip about the personal lives of celebrities, the contradiction comes almost last in their media view.

Right now we are seeing that Korea has once again appeared in the US news media; but the question that has to be addressed is what is the so-called "new" antagonism notable for? The US View of China in the region; the two Koreas, North's and South's, complex history in relation to US foreign policy and imperialism after WWII; and thus, the American public, may not be well-informedwith the background of the recent events that have occurred this week.

This week also marked the 60th anniversary of Chinaâ€™s entrance into the Korean War. The Chinese attack was carried out by some 3000,000 troops; it concludedÂ in one of the most astonishing defeats ever encountered by the US military in history. What was to follow is a very protracted and bloody stalemate that ended only with the armistice declared back in July, 1953. The war was to claim the lives of more than four million people; the vast majority of them Korean civilians.Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â So 60 years after US and Chinese troops waged bitter hand-to-hand combat south of the Yalu River, hostilities on the Korean Peninsula are arguably at their most heightened level since the end of the Korean War. They are being fed now by the worsening great power conflicts between the US and China.

The arrival in the Yellow Sea this weekend of the naval battle group led by the US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the USS George Washington, signals another intensification of the current crisis. The sending out of the giant warship was made known in the immediate wake of the North Korean shelling last Tuesday on the island of Yeonpyeong, killing two South Korean marines and two construction workers. North Korea was to say that the bombardment was in response to shells fired into its territorial waters by the South Korean military during war games held only a few miles from the Northâ€™s coastline.

Responding to the Yeonpyeong attack, South Korea launched a retaliatory barrage that it claimed inflicted significant damage; but no casually reports have been issued in the North. Now new war gamesâ€”this time with a massive US componentâ€”create the conditions for another clash.Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Inflammatory and provocative rhetoric has accompanied the crisis on both sides of the Koreaâ€™s demilitarized zone. On Friday, North Korea criticized the planned joint US-South Korean exercise as a provocation and warned, â€œThe situation on the Korean peninsula is inching closer to the brink of war.â€

At this point the South Korean government had replaced its defense minister with a former chairman of the militaryâ€™s Joint Chiefs of Staff and announced the adoption of the new rules of engagement that would allow the military to respond with disproportionate force to attacks from the North.

Within the South Korean government, right-wing legislators meanwhile have denounced the government of President Lee Myung-bak for failing to take more aggressive action, including the use of air strikes, against the North.Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â President Lee Myung-bak and his Grand National Party (GNP), the party of the former military dictatorships that ruled South Korea with US support came into office promising a hard-line stance toward North Korea. South Korea cut off its aid and discarded its â€œSunshine policy,â€ which was geared towards improving relations and achieving a higher level of reconciliation via investments and aid.

Now,Â President Lee Myung-bak is under pressure from his own supporters and elements within the military to make good on his hard-line rhetoric. It would be very difficult to imagine another armed confrontation not provoking a major retaliation.

What makes this situation all the more burdened some with the danger is the way in which it's being exploited by Washington to pursue its own strategic interests in the region, in particular vis-Ã -vis China.

At this time the US has begun deploying one of its most powerful warships in the Yellow Sea as a display and exhibition of its military supremacy against China. While the Chinese had issued a rather restrained and precise warning over the exercise, declaring that it opposed â€œany military acts in our exclusive zoneâ€â€”which extends over 200 miles from the Chinese coast. Others close to theChinese government and its military vigorously denounced the US maneuvers.

While, the immediate pretext for the confrontational and offensive exercise is the Korean conflict; it occurs at a time of an increasingly aggressive US policy in Asia. Recall the US attempt to insert itself into the territorial conflicts in the South China Sea;Â backing Japan, Vietnam and other Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries against China. What has to be understood is that the US aim in the region has been to pursue a series of alliances and assertions of the military power directed against the Chinese. The contain-China umbrella would stretch from India, Pakistan and Afghanistan to Southeast Asia,Â Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Following the worst capitalist world financial meltdown, we see that the geostrategic offensive has been coupled with an increasingly aggressive demand for the devaluation of Chinese currency and trade concessions. The thing that must be understood is that fundamentally, the growing US-China tensions are rooted in deep on-going shifts in the world economy and the global balance of forces: Chinaâ€™s rise to the position of the worldâ€™s second-largest economy, eclipsing Japan; on the otherhand, the relative economic decline of US imperialism, combined with its growing use of military force.Â Â Â Â Â Â Â What has to be understood is that this conflict can turn Northeast Asia and the whole planet into a militaristic tinderbox. Much as in the period before the World War I, seemingly isolated regional confrontations between minor powers have the potential of precipitating a global conflagration; this time between nuclear-armed opponents and rivals.Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â And now under the pretense and veil of "North Korea," the Korean Peninsula and the Yellow Sea have come under the real threat by American foreign policy and imperialism. The US cannot confront the growing regional strength of China--it can only engage in political subterfuge as usual, in the US media.